In the Greek myth of Pandora’s box, hope remained inside after everything else escaped.
Hesiod’s account says Pandora opened a storage jar containing troubles that then spread among humanity. Hope remained behind, although the exact meaning of this ending has been debated since antiquity. The Greek word is elpis, which can mean expectation or hope.
The familiar phrase “Pandora’s box” is a later transformation of the original story. Hesiod described a pithos, or large earthenware jar, not a small box. The container became a box in later retellings and translations.
Readers sometimes assume that hope escaped into the world, but in Hesiod’s version it stays inside the vessel. Interpretations differ over whether this is comforting, ambiguous, or deliberately unsettling.